The Diary of Lyle Bennet
by Gamebird
Summary: Lyle Bennet, the world's coolest person that no one cares about, updates his diary. I guarantee this is the BEST story you'll ever read that has Lyle and Audrey as main characters. It's probably also the only one, but so it goes.
1. Diary of Lyle Bennet

Dear Diary -

My name is Lyle Bennet. I'm writing this because no one ever remembers who I am. I think I've finally figured out what my superpower is. I would say that it's like the lamest superpower ever, but my sister has already ruined that meme for me with her constant whining and moaning about **her** superpower, that she's had for **years** and was apparently **born with**. Her "lamest superpower evar" (according to her - I'd kill for her ability and maybe someday I will) is the ability to LIVE FOR-FRAKKING-EVER and be INVINCIBLE. Wow. In one ability. But according to her, it's lame.

God. I cannot think of a better example of how much of a stupid [insert word I shouldn't call my sister] she is. I'm not about to be all emo like _some_ people I know, and hide in the corner cutting myself or throw myself off tall stuff because I'm an adrenaline junkie. No, I have bigger plans than that and when I'm done, you might not know my name, but things _will_ be different.

Let me tell you how this all happened, at least all the important parts, because you're not going to hear it anywhere else. I only hope you'll remember it after you read this diary, assuming you even find it. I intend to keep adding chapters, as I get around to it, but I'm going to be kind of busy for a while getting things set up.

When I first noticed was just a few days ago. I was at home, minding my own business like usual, when Mom's latest douchebag of a "friend" kicked me out of the living room because he had some dog show he wanted to watch. It was a VCR tape, for crying out loud! He could have watched it whenever, but no, he does it right then - just walks over to the TV like the rude frakker he is and started hitting buttons like what I was watching didn't matter at all. I should have known. Even then. I mean, it was too much.

Oh, and as an aside, now that I have a superpower, one of these days I'm going to get a mountain lion or a tiger and I'm going to train it to EAT little dogs. I'll give it like a Chihuahua every day and a Pomeranian on Sundays and a Papillion on Saturdays. And I'll do it in public too, so I can listen to people cry about it. I'll take it to that big dog show in New York and just let it go to town. I love Mr. Muggles, but I have really, really had it with people who coo over little dogs.

So anyway, that was when it started. Sort of. Maybe. I went in and told mom that I'd had it and I was going to live with dad and she said something like, "Whatever dear," and so I got in her purse (it was right in front of her, so it wasn't like it was stealing) and took her money and left. I took the old beater car she'd got me (they bought Claire a **new car**, but what do I get? A ten year old Ford thing and my mom was like 'Oh, it's so reliable! There are so many of them on the road still!' Thanks, Mom. Really.)

I drove to Dad's, which was a really, really long drive but it was kind of fun too. I'd always wanted to do something like that. I knocked on his door and he let me in, but he totally wasn't expecting me. It was almost like he's forgotten he even had a son, but I've come to expect that anymore. He said he was going out to see some lady he worked for and I tagged along. No one paid me any attention anyway, so it wasn't a big deal.

This older gal he worked for turned out to be Claire's rich biological grandmother. She had this box of stuff that she told him to deliver to Odessa and he said sure, he'd get right on it. But it was pretty late so he went home to pack some stuff and I ordered in some pizza. We ate and he went to bed early. I should have been tired too and I was, but I'd ordered a two liter of Pepsi with the pizza and I was a little wired. Besides, I'd been listening when that Petrelli woman told dad what was in the box and I could swear she said the serum was in it.

After he was in bed, I picked the lock. It wasn't even that good a lock, so I'm not sure what the point was. Inside was a bunch of stuff, but there were five of these tubes like they show on TV, that people ram into their leg and press the button on top. And I thought, 'if I ever want a superpower, this is the time to get one.' In retrospect, that was probably a really dumb thing to do, but I did it anyway, because if Claire can have a superpower, then I can have one too.

I guess I passed out on the couch. I woke up the next day and Dad was gone. No note - nothing. He'd taken the box. I tried to call him, but he wouldn't pick up. I thought that you know, if he was pissed about me breaking into the box and all, then wouldn't he at least have said something? Then I realized that he had all these boxes of information on abilities and people who had them. Even though I didn't feel like I had an ability, and I was feeling pretty stupid thinking I'd probably shot up with someone's diabetes medicine or maybe a dangerous virus or something, I thought I might as well read about abilities and learn something.

So I was flipping through them thinking I'd read my sister's first and I was looking under "Healing", but I looked a little past it and saw "Invisibility" and I thought, _Wow, that's a cool power. I wish I had __**that**__._ I read it. Apparently the early stages of the power's manifestation don't make you technically invisible. People just don't pay attention to you. And I read it and thought, _Whoa. Totally, I have that power._ I kept reading, because it said some people never progress past that stage, but others get up to where not only do people not pay attention to you, but they'll even forget they ever knew you, like, if they don't know you real well or they only meet you once or twice. And _**that's**_ when it started getting creepy.

The next stage was where you're actually invisible and you have to literally shake people and get in their faces to make them realize you're there. Even then, unless you make a deal about it they'll just go on about their way like it was no big deal. They forget your real name unless they know you really well and you have to make one up if you want anyone to be able to talk about you. You'll never get picked out of a line-up so you could do any crime you want and get away with it.

There had even been reports of a stage past that where no one could find you, no matter what they used to look with and everyone who ever knew you forgot you existed. Well, everyone except certain people with mental powers and certain people with abilities that let them resist mental powers, or recover from them. "Cellular regeneration" was on the list of abilities resistant to it, which makes sense because the only member of my family who ever remembers I exist these days is my sister.

I know what you're thinking. By now I was wondering if the stuff I injected myself with did anything at all, or did I have a power before? I don't know. I really don't - and it doesn't matter. But I decided that now that I had a power, I was going to do something cool with it, something way better than my stupid sister ever did with her "lame" power of IMMORTALITY and REGENERATION. I'd show her. I'll show you all. Even if you never remember who I am.

* * *

Audrey Hanson flipped through the other pages in the slim folio, but they were all blank. She had a strange desire to dismiss it as a crank not worth her attention, but the book had just shown up on her desk. She didn't remember putting it there and given the subject matter, that she couldn't recall putting it there seemed pretty important. She turned it over and over in her hands, fussing over it, a tense internal debate raging within her.

The young man standing nearby, unseen, who had only that morning decided to call himself Thomas Marvel (after a brief and educational Google search), waited impatiently for her decision.

* * *

**A/N: This is just a little one-shot I knocked off tonight, inspired by an email exchange with a fellow FanFiction reader. I am pleased to see I now have the privilege of having the **_**only**_** story with Lyle/Audrey as main characters.**

**Tell me what you think Lyle's plans would be and what sort of hijinks he would get up to. I'd love to hear your ideas.**


	2. Things you didn't want to know

**A/N #1: I was compiling a timeline of Shattered Salvation stuff and discovered I'd never published this! For shame. Here it is. More fun from our favorite inviso-boy.**

Dear Diary –

Today I'm going to run away from home and join the circus. For real. Well, sort of. I'm going to move out of my Dad's apartment. And this isn't just because I found that box under his bed. I mean, what does a person need with_ that _many pairs of handcuffs? At first I'll admit I was just confused, until I found the box of condoms. After that, what I wanted to find was brain bleach. Oh. My. God. And he didn't even have any magazines or anything that might be interesting. Just… this_ other_ stuff. Where is that guy who erases memories when you need him?

So. Now that I know things about my dad I never wanted to know, I'm going to leave. I have a mission though. I've spent the last week going through his files here, reading up on things and figuring out what's going on. It was the sinkhole that really did it. Not the one in New York, or that one in Guatemala, or the one in Florida (really, what is it with things? Just when you thought it was safe to stay on the land! Sheesh.) It was the one in California that swallowed that whole town. The FBI is all over that.

More about the FBI later. That totally didn't go like I wanted it too.

About the circus. That's such an incredibly overused cliché, so overused that even I know about it and I'm not exactly all that well travelled (though I have wasted quite a few evenings reading TV Tropes). I challenge you to find a single reference to circus folk or carnivals in the popular media that doesn't have them being this insular family of freaks, almost always with "real" special powers. So why am I not surprised to find that the biggest concentration of superpowered people are all in the same circus, traveling around with each other? It's like I'm living in some horribly unoriginal television drama. Maybe if I'm lucky, people will be inspired by my life and write fanfiction about me. Because, as we all know, _invisible makes it hot_. On the other hand… it'd probably be slash and I'd be doing it with the major villain. So… never mind.

There was this one time I tried to get a job at a traveling carnival and it was nothing like the ones on TV. For one thing, they weren't all this bunch of group-hugging, xenophobic hippies. They were just normal guys. For another, the carnival wasn't their life or their home. Sure, they had places to sleep on the road, but they had homes, like, somewhere else, in real places. With kids that I presume went to school and wives that did whatever it is wives are supposed to do that's not sexist yet still allows them to be home to take care of the kids. I'm not sure how that's managed, but luckily I'll never have to worry about that.

I was trying to get a job there, thinking that a weekend at the carnival wouldn't be all that bad and I'd been walking past the lot anyway on my way back from taekwondo. But no jobs. And not because they were afraid of outsiders, but because of how it worked. You see, they don't even own the rides. Some big company does. These other guys, who are part of a different company, go rent the rides and carry them to different places and run them there to see if they can get enough money to cover the rent, the gas and be worth their while. It's pretty much one driver to the ride and then that driver stands around and operates the ride until it's time to go, so there's no reason why they'd ever hire some teen like me who was just walking by. But they gave me some free popcorn because I hung out and talked with them, so that was nice. I guess my power hadn't kicked in yet.

I imagine that if it had, that would have been really bad for business. I wonder what would happen if I went and stood in front of the door to the bathroom in a public place? Would people push me out of the way, or would they be unable to remember where the bathroom was? I've already noticed that if I take unattended stuff, no one seems to care.

Speaking of which, I talked to that Audrey woman who Dad's files said was the current expert in the FBI on specials. She didn't believe me that I had a power. She even made fun of me about it, calling me an angsty teen and a couple other things. She was really a [censored]. So after she had me escorted out of the building, I just followed someone else back in and went back to her office. When she went to the bathroom or wherever, I copied all her files onto Dad's portable hard drive.

It's going to take me a while to read through all those, but hey, what else is an angsty teen going to do? (Besides try to avoid thinking about what my dad keeps in a box under the bed.)

**A/N #2: If you didn't already get the joke, Google "invisible makes it hot."**


End file.
